Coming into Masters week, we rank the 10 players most likely to find themselves in the Butler Cabin on Sunday evening alongside Scottie Scheffler and the leading amateur.
09. Brooks Koepka
It’s a major, so it’s impossible to overlook Brooks Koepka. In 42 major championship starts, he’s had five victories and a further 13 top-10 finishes. Of the 96 players [currently] in the field, only Phil Mickelson, teeing it up in his 31st Masters, has claimed more of golf’s most prized assets.
Koepka is yet to tame Augusta National, but runner-up finishes to Tiger Woods in 2019 and to Jon Rahm in 2023 are proof that he’s more than capable of adding a Green Jacket or two to the three Wannamaker Cups and two U.S. Open Trophies he possesses.
Notoriously apathetic towards golf tournaments that don’t count as majors, his Data Golf ranking of 45th in the world should be taken with more than a pinch of salt, and instead, his most recent start (prior to this week’s LIV Miami) where he finished solo second to Joaquin Niemann is a sign that he’s rounding into form at exactly the right time.
And that’s just the way he had drawn it up, admitting that he’d ramped up his practise sessions a month out from the tournament.
The knee issues that he feared may be bringing his career to a premature end and convinced him to cash in and join LIV have cleared up, and having become the first LIV golfer to win a major since jumping ship with his victory at the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill, becoming the first LIV golfer to win the Masters would be another answer to the critics and that’s something he’s thrived on.
Despite an indifferent showing in 2024 where, by his own admission, a poor six-hole stretch on the difficult Thursday left him with too much work to do, he’s very comfortable at Augusta and continues to glean information on how best to tackle the challenges.
“Every time you go play Augusta, I feel like your knowledge gets a little bit better about the place,” he said ahead of his 10th Masters Tournament. “I learned a lot. I’m not going to share everything. I can’t give away all the secrets.”
No Irishman has ever won the Masters, and while Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry will be gunning hard to break that hoodoo, Koepka’s caddie Ricky Elliott could become the first Irishman to be part of a Masters winning duo.
Leave a comment